Like all good mystery stories, this game does not give up its secrets easily.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance:
- The third game has you collect five Null shards. This can represent the five 'dead victims' from the second game: Rigby (the Swindler), Hirst (the Captain), Baia (the Priestess) AS (the Mentor), and Lucy Montfaucon (the Heart). 'Dead victims' because their souls were collected by The Craftsman to create the Null shards and therefore Deader than Dead. The other two 'victims,' Maggie Cox and Simon Grayson, may have died a traditional death (i.e. soul left their bodies) but their souls were trapped in something (the Fortune Teller booth for Cox and the paper theatre for Grayson, both in the Library) and therefore were not collected.
- From that it can also be explained why the faces in photographs of the victims were burned/scratched off in all the games. As soon as you die in one of the universes created by the Null, your soul turns into a Null crystal. This means all traces of your actual existence erases and your face on any pictures/photographs are scratched out. It also goes to explain why the picture of Maggie Cox in the newspaper was not damaged, as her soul was merely trapped and not erased.
- In the third game, there are wires everywhere lying haphazardly on the ground and there are exposed puzzle boxes on the table in arbitrary places. Everything seems out of place (honestly, why would you have an exposed generator in the library?). Contrast this with the previous efforts from the Craftsman: everything is in its place and everything is self-contained. Puzzles are integrated into existing furniture and any wires are hidden away. Considering that the Craftsman is well, a True Craftsman, and this is his home, you would think everything would be more organised and better planned. Until you read his notes. In one of them he states his Null crystals are running out of energy and he was running the risk of being trapped in his own home. He needed to find a new source of energy (i.e. you) quickly. Hence the reduction in quality: he was literally running out of time.
- The boat segment from the second game seems incongruously brief, more like an out-of-place tutorial than a proper chapter. It's only after the third game reveals that the Craftsman has been watching AS, and you after him, that you realize Fireproof made that bit a chapter for a reason: it let them show you another Tarot card, one with the title of Isolation. The key AS passes to you in the Seance room was one of the Craftsman's, filched by AS in his wanderings, and it let you sidestep the usual transition between Rooms, thus dodging the Craftsman's surveillance and buying you the chance to escape without him balking you. Hence, the "Isolation" card: it symbolizes that it's the first time you've truly been alone since the first game.
- The weird sparking/glitching effect that occurs in the second game as you tune the glyphs is both disorienting and a little hard on the eyes. What does AS complain about in one of his notes? That he can't wear his own eyepiece for long, because it makes his eyes and head hurt. No wonder the Craftsman dismissed AS's lenses as "crude".
- Reinforced in the 5th installment as the eyepiece the Craftsman provides the dective is visibly more ergonomic and refined.
Fridge Horror:
- When the paper theatre is explored in the third game Grayson is nowhere to be found. This, and coupled with the fact posters of him has the faces erased, means his soul has probably been made into Null by now.
- There are a lot of group photos around Grey Holm and they look to be the Craftman's family. Every single person has their faces scratched out. Considering that only happens if the individuals in question have their soul turned into Null, it calls into question how many people the Craftsman had preyed upon and what type of person he is to target his own family.
- Either that, or the people in the photos weren't his relatives: rather, he'd arranged to take their photos so he could have souvenirs of his victims, Serial Killer style. And he kept the photos prominently displayed even after their faces were erased, because they'd been so expendable to him that he'd never bothered to remember what they looked like anyway.
